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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Gift That Keeps Giving

The reported host of a private $50,000-a-plate fundraiser
that has come to haunt Mitt Romney this week is a prominent Florida
private equity manager who has attracted media attention for partying
with the rich and famous.
…
[Marc J.] Leder, who has given nearly
$300,000 to Romney and other Republicans this cycle, used part of his
fortune to become a co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team
and has become a fixture of New York tabloid reports, hobnobbing with
rap mogul Russell Simmons and other celebrities. The New York Post
dubbed him a “private equity party boy.”

In August 2011, the same
tabloid reported on a Hamptons bacchanal at a $500,000-a-night
oceanfront mansion rented by Leder, “where guests cavorted nude in the
pool and performed sex acts, scantily dressed Russians danced on
platforms and men twirled lit torches to a booming techno beat.” [my emphasis]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mitt Romney's meritocracy.

As Paul Krugman says, "Clearly, we’re living in a bad political novel written by some kind of liberal. I mean, things like this don’t happen in real life."

Currently Reading

In Defense of a Liberal Education, by Fareed Zakaria. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, the damn Kindle edition doesn't include the publication date.

"The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pointed to three ideas associated with the humanities that have positively shaped the world. First, he notes the philosopher Isaiah Berlin's warning that the belief in a single, all-encompassing truth inevitably produces blind arrogance, possibly leading to dangerous consequences. Second, he highlights John Rawls's contribution to political thought: that the most just society would be the one you would choose if you did not know how rich or poor or how talented or untalented you were when born into it. ... Lastly, Kristof highlights the work of Peter Singer, who has brought the treatment of animals and the pain that human beings often needlessly cause them to the fore of our moral consciousness."